If you are any sort of college basketball fan, welcome to Christmas.
It starts today, then continues all day Friday.
Grab your noisemaker and get ready for New Year's Eve, too we've got two of those in a row, starting tonight.
The first two days of the NCAA men's basketball tournament thread hope, anticipation, despair and drama into a patchwork quilt of the best back-to-back days on the yearly sports calendar.
Games and scores pile on top of one another in a dizzying waterfall. Of the 64 games needed to provide a winner to this American obsession, 32 are played over the next two days. The "bracket racket" that shuffling sound you will hear in offices across the country today as folks surreptitiously check their draw sheets has just begun.
By Saturday morning, 48 hours from now, the pace will have slowed. Half of the field's dreams will have turned to dust.
By next Thursday, when we're down to the Sweet 16, perhaps only three or four true surprises will remain in the field. Familiar names will dominate.
But the next two days are college basketball's version of the Statue of Liberty.
There are poor teams. Tired teams. Downtrodden teams with huddled masses of fans, begging for a win.
And every one of those teams is just one great shooting day away from getting talked about all night in Hoops Nation.
Think Coppin State. Or Richmond. Or Santa Clara. Or Gonzaga. Or Weber State. Or Valparaiso.
All have scored remarkable surprises in this tournament over the past few years. Yet we have never had the Holy Grail of first-round NCAA tournament surprises. The field expanded to 64 teams in 1985 that was the year of No. 8 seed Villanova's extraordinary win in the final over No. 1 seed Georgetown.
Since 1985, No. 16 teams have gone 0-64 against No. 1 teams in the first round.
So we can't expect an upset from Monmouth, Northwestern State, Alabama State or UNC Greensboro today or Friday those are the four teams scheduled against the powerful No.1 seed quartet.
Yet we can imagine, can't we?
When the scoreboard at the bottom of the screen reads "UNC Greensboro 2, Stanford 0," we can dream. Just for a second.
And then when the scoreboard says, "Stanford 22, UNCG 4," we can always shrug and pine for another possibility somewhere else. Somewhere a No. 3, 4 or 5 seed will fall, at least. A Florida or Mississippi or Indiana or Cincinnati.
And we'll all feel, for a second, like we are watching "Hoosiers" for the first time.
While we're still at this magical point where everyone except poor No. 65 Winthrop is still breathing we can also still have fun with fantasy Final Fours.
Like:
"Short Name" Final Four: BYU, Iona, USC, Texas.
"Girl's Name" Final Four: Temple, Charlotte, Georgia, Hampton (yeah, I know, it's a stretch).
"California Dreamin' " Final Four: Stanford, UCLA, Fresno State, Cal State Northridge.
"No Idea Where the Campus Actually Is" Final Four: Western Kentucky, Eastern Illinois, Southern Utah, Iowa State.
Or, courtesy of Washington Post columnist Tony Kornheiser, the "Things You Wouldn't Want to Sit On" Final Four: Longhorns, Razorbacks, Hornets, Gators.
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